


glitter in the darkness of my world

by kadma



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-05 13:12:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12190626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadma/pseuds/kadma
Summary: For the first time in her life, Spencer has no idea what she's doing.Written forFemslash Exchange 2017.





	glitter in the darkness of my world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cdybedahl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdybedahl/gifts).



Spencer has faith in her knowledge. Always has, always will: she's a Hastings, after all, conditioned from her first lungful of air to believe in herself. And on the rare occasions when she doesn't know something, she knows how to search for it efficiently. She's so good, the teachers sometimes joked she's better than any machine they've worked with.

After everything, she almost believes it. Humans aren't made to survive years and years of trauma, but a machine... it stood more of a chance. It's a comforting thought, that she's always been mechanically sound, even if her poor mind had broken once or twice along the way out of Rosewood.

But when it comes to Aria, the world beneath her feet crumbles away. She's suspended in mid air, desperately clawing at empty space to stop herself from falling into a white abyss. Since the Fitz's divorce and her own messy reunion and break-up with Toby, their entire selves have been blurred, entangled consciences and shared couch naps arguing over daytime television and ice-cream flavours.

Spencer wakes up with a patch of sweaty, dark hair sticking to her face. She brushes it to the side and takes a deep breath, gathering together her last strands of courage, and looks to her left. Aria's tiny frame barely moves under the heavy blankets. Spencer sighs. It's not relief, it's a strange mix of elation and fear.

For the first time in her life, she has no idea what she's doing.

She lies back and closes her eyes, watching the kaleidoscope of colours fade in and out of darkness. She tries not to think, to fall back asleep instead, but there are thoughts that so desperately want to be heard that she just can't file them away into a dark corner in her head.

Aria wants to watch _The Blue Dahlia_ for the millionth time instead of leaving Spencer's flat, getting some air, getting a job. She wants to kiss Spencer's collarbones and leave ugly purple hickeys all over her skin; she's said as much, soliloquising in their post-coital dream-talks about how she wants to mark Spencer, to own her. To make her promise that she won't leave.

Spencer's called in every sick day she's got for the whole year. It's been three weeks. The papers keep coming. Aria grits her teeth through the phone calls with her lawyer, collapsing into Spencer's arms like a broken doll afterwards, trying her hardest not to cry. Spencer holds her firmly, but not too tight, not wanting to take advantage of the vulnerability and the situation.

"You know I love you, right?" Spencer ignores the way her heart flips in her chest, a stone sinking into her stomach.

Aria looks at her with wide eyes.

"Yeah, Spence. I love you too."

Spencer licks the stamps and drops off the signed forms. She deletes Toby's number from her phone. She calls her mom and asks how she's doing, if she needs anything. Since the cancer's gone into remission, she's been quiet, keeping herself to herself, busy with some new political project that Spencer will eventually be invited to join, but only when the details have been finalised. She calls Melissa, who doesn't pick up often, but when she does, she sounds happy, and Spencer tries not to feel envious but it's there and she doesn't know what to do with it.

Aria spends most of the day sleeping. She listens to Dean Martin and stares out of the window, through rain or shine.

One day, she breaks the pattern. Spencer walks in and out of the modest kitchen, trying to make something that isn't instant ramen or mac and cheese for dinner, when Aria's voice rings out through the living room and cuts through her flesh.

"I hate you."

Spencer thinks she's misheard. She faces Aria with a can of beans in one hand and a can-opener in the other. Aria doesn't turn around. She looks at the world outside that seems beyond her reach, forever beyond them both.

"Aria?"

"I hate you," she spits, venom in her eyes as she glares at Spencer over her shoulder. "You loved me and you let me do..."

"Aria--"

"You let me turn a simple meeting and a crush on my teacher into this, this-- this--"

Aria can't continue; her sobs overtake her words as she curls into herself, coiling the blanket around her torso and shoulders. Spencer takes in her disheveled hair, her wan skin and brown eyes, shining only with furious tears.

"I loved you?"

Aria shakes her head.

"You were never supposed to love me. No-one was."

Spencer takes Aria in her arms, easily folding her body around Aria, as if they're two creases in an origami made by a professional hand. She pushes back that lank hair and kisses her, deeply, roughly, trying to condense years of lust and longing and love? -- perhaps it's always been _love_ love -- into one moment.

"I hate you too," says Spencer, moving her lips against Aria's cold neck. "I hate how small and delicate you look, so I always have to be careful not to break you. I hate it when you drink coffee through a straw for a week after getting your teeth bleached. I hate your three a.m. writing sessions with Frank Sinatra blaring so loudly through your headphones that it keeps me up. I hate the fact you're always going to be someone I love, no matter how much I try to tell myself otherwise."

Aria looks at her like she's been stabbed, startled and frightened. For a moment, Spencer thinks she's screwed this up, all of it, and that Aria will stand up and walk out of her door, out of her life, without a word. But Aria's lips twitch, and for the first time since she moved into Spencer's place, Aria manages something that looks like a smile.

She places her hand on Spencer's cheek and pulls her in until their lips are seperated by only a breath.

"I love your smug face whenever I screw something up, like you're dying to tell me you told me so, but you're too kind to actually say it. I love the way your hair smells after you've been running around in the rain on the days you forget your umbrella. I love that you cry at the end of romcoms whilst pretending your allergies are acting up. I love how tall you are, my towering guardian angel, all gangly limbs and invisible wings."

Spencer presses her lips to Aria's broken skin, and this time, Aria kisses back.


End file.
